Sixteen

THE FIRST THING LOTTIE saw when she walked into the repair bay was a snarl of twisted, blackened metal.

It took her a minute to realize that that snarl of blasted steel had once, in fact, been a plane wing.

Like the repair hangar in San Diego, this one, at Kaneohe, just a short distance from Pearl Harbor, had a giant door that opened to the world outside, filling the entire place with the tang of the sea air, the sun-warmed breezes, and the faintest trace of the pink plumeria that grew in patches around the base. But unlike the one in San Diego, it opened almost directly onto the harbor and the ocean beyond, with no major structures to block the view of the sparkling blue water from the workshop.

But that wasn’t the biggest difference from the shop she’d grown used to in San Diego. The biggest difference was that, on every plane she could see from where she was now standing, she saw actual signs of battle: not just the twisted steel of the plane wing that was closest to her, but tail ends ventilated by bullet holes, cracked windshields, sprays of shot all along the belly of one bomber.

The problems she’d grown expert in fixing in San Diego were all mechanical—the work that was necessary to keep a fleet in shape far from the heat of battle.

But she’d never seen planes with damage like this before.

“How did it even stay in flight?” she murmured, mostly to herself, as she looked back at the twisted wing that was closest to her. She wasn’t an expert in aerodynamics, but she couldn’t imagine a plane doing anything but falling out of the sky when it was compromised like that.

“What, missy?” someone said from behind her. “Don’t you know how a plane works?”

When Lottie turned to see who’d said it, she caught sight of a skinny guy with a narrow face and greasy blond hair. He gave her a nasty view of his teeth, with something between a leer and a grin, as he scampered by, heading toward the knot of men inside the hangar at the beginning of the day.

Color rushed to Lottie’s cheeks, and hot words rose to her lips. She’d known that she wouldn’t be welcome in this shop, either. But she hadn’t thought the trouble would start so early in the day.

But before she could say anything, she heard another voice behind her. This one had a Midwesterner’s faint twang. “The pilot,” the voice said. “He could have bailed out, but he didn’t want to lose the plane. So he risked his life, bringing her down safe.”

When Lottie turned to look, she was surprised to see a man about her own father’s age, with a lined face and salt-and-pepper hair. It came as a pleasant surprise after all the guys she’d been spending so much time among, who were usually not much more than boys themselves.

But she couldn’t tell from his expression whether he was pleased or not to be dealing with a woman in the shop. So she looked at him warily, trying to read his face for any signs of where she might stand. The name tag on his overalls read Cunningham.

“Now it’s our job to fix her up,” Cunningham said.

Lottie relaxed a little bit at this. Cunningham seemed to be eager to get to work. And work was something she could do. There wasn’t a hint in his expression that when he said “our job,” he meant only men.

But before she could reply, he turned away and let out a piercing whistle that instantly silenced all the morning chatter in the shop.

As faces throughout the hangar turned to look at him, Lottie did her best to fade into the crowd, so that all the eyes in the place wouldn’t be on her, too. But even though she managed to find a place behind the wing of a nearby plane, she could still see some of the glances flickering over her, which looked a whole lot less than friendly, even as Cunningham began to address them.

“All right,” he said, clapping his hands, then rubbing them together. “We’ve got an aircraft carrier shipping out this week. And you know what needs to be on it?”

He scanned the crowd, but nobody was brave enough to raise a hand or shout out.

Cunningham’s face twisted into a wry grin. “It wasn’t a trick question, sailors,” he said. “An aircraft carrier needs aircraft. Not much point in using up all that wartime fuel to pilot a boat over the Pacific with no birds on it.

“And at this late date in the war,” he went on, “there’s no such thing as a plane that doesn’t need repair, unless it just came off the factory line at Willow Run.”

Lottie felt the hair on the back of her arms stand up. Willow Run had been a big Ford factory before the war. But once fighting broke out, the powerful industrial technology had all been refitted, not to build cars, but to build planes for the war effort. She’d toured the factory herself not long ago and was stunned that the planners had been able to convert the giant campus to wartime use so quickly, and by the dedication and nimbleness of the factory workers. They had learned virtually a whole new trade in order to make planes instead of cars. And not only that, but they were all working incredibly long hours, to get as many planes as they could to the front as quickly as possible.

But with the charge of hometown pride, she felt the weight of responsibility herself. Those workers back in Michigan could build the planes. But once they got to the front, keeping the aircraft in the air was another full-time job. And Lottie itched to get started.

“Until the carrier goes out next week,” Cunningham continued, “we’ll be working double time.”

As a murmur rippled through the crowd, Cunningham raised his hand. “That doesn’t just mean you’ll be here as long as I say every day. It means you’ll be working twice as fast while you’re here. Got it?”

Around the crowd, the men nodded in assent, their faces determined.

“All right,” Cunningham said with another clap of his hands. “Get to work. Except you new recruits,” he added as an afterthought. “To me.”

As most of the men strode away, heading toward the various planes scattered around the hangar, a handful of men, including Pickman, straggled up toward Cunningham, who was now consulting a clipboard he’d picked up from a workbench nearby. Lottie took her place among them.

“Hanson,” Cunningham said. “Looks like you’ve got years of experience with bodywork.”

A freckle-faced kid with a spike of straw-colored hair that looked like it might as well have been picked from whatever hayfield he came from nodded eagerly.

Cunningham looked at the plane with the damaged wing that had confronted Lottie when she first came in.

“See if you can’t help get that Helldiver back in action,” he said.

“Aye aye, sir!” the blond kid yelped, and jogged over to the plane.

Working down the list, Cunningham assigned each new recruit to a project that had at least something to do with their proven skills. After he’d sent half a dozen guys off to various planes, he said, “Palmer.”

“Yes, sir,” Lottie said.

The man next to her shuffled in surprise. Behind her, she thought she heard a muffled snicker. Was that Pickman, about to start up again? she wondered wearily. Well, if he wanted any more punishment, she already knew how to deal with him.

“Looks like you know your way around an engine,” Cunningham said. When he looked up, his eyebrows were raised in question, but Lottie thought she saw a hint of respect in his eyes, too.

Polite protests rose to Lottie’s lips. If this were a dinner party, she’d have been expected to put on a show of modesty and pretend that she didn’t have any skills at all. But something told her this wasn’t the time to pretend she didn’t have skills. She did, and she was ready to put them to good use.

“Yes, sir,” she said, raising her voice so there could be no chance he wouldn’t hear her.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve got a knotty problem on that Wildcat in the corner.”

Lottie smiled. The Wildcat was built by General Motors—another Detroit contribution to the war effort.

“All right,” Cunningham said, nodding at her. “Get to it.”

But as Lottie turned to go, she heard a voice behind her. “You only gonna make another problem,” someone said. “Putting a girl on that job.”

Lottie spun around, eyes blazing, and found herself looking directly into Pickman’s eyes.

But then she realized Pickman wasn’t talking.

And the voice still was.

“My wife tried to add oil to our car once,” whoever it was said. “Time she got done, I almost had to buy another one.”

Lottie scanned the small knot of new recruits and figured out who was speaking just as the voice dissolved into an ugly snicker. It was a pasty-faced guy with dirt-colored hair who had somehow managed to get through basic training with much of his figure still just as doughy as his face. The name on his overalls was Simons.

Sometimes, Lottie had had to bite back the words that came to her lips. But now her whole mind just went blank. She felt a sting inside her chest and heat rise in her cheeks.

Everyone, she realized, could see the flush spreading across her face. She felt the threat of tears in the back of her throat and prayed she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Especially not now, on the first day.

She’d gotten through so much before, without ever letting them see her crack. Why was she having so much trouble now? Maybe it was because, after everything she’d already been through and fought for, here she was again, feeling like she was right back where she had been when she first started. None of the respect she’d managed to wrest from the men back in California mattered here.

She was going to have to start over, from scratch, and earn it from all of these new men.

She took a deep breath and took another step, but as she did, she heard Pickman’s voice.

This time, fury flooded her heart. Pickman should have known better. After all the times she’d bested him back in the other shop, after their conversation on the beach once they’d arrived here together, he was really going to keep bullying her now?

The anger gave her the strength to narrow her eyes and raise her chin, ready to stride away.

But then she heard what he was actually saying.

“I don’t know you,” Pickman said. “But I know Palmer. And if you want to get this job done, you want her on it.”

Simons treated Pickman to the same sneer he’d been reserving for Lottie. “How you know Palmer?” he asked with an ugly suggestion in his tone. “Sounds like she’s got you whipped, for sure.”

Lottie winced internally at Simons’s insinuation that Pickman must be involved with her. But she managed to keep her features placid.

Pickman looked at Lottie. There wasn’t exactly sympathy in his glance, but something else: the kind of look men give to one another when they know they’re on the same team, and something important depends on it.

“Maybe,” Pickman said. “But you better watch yourself, or you will be, too.”

“Whooo-eee!” Simons said, leaning back in what was clearly a warm-up for another barrage of mockery and abuse.

At this point, old Cunningham broke in.

“Palmer,” he said. “Didn’t I just tell you to get at that Wildcat?”

“Yes, sir,” Lottie said promptly.

“Why are you still here, then?” Cunningham asked.

“Sorry, sir,” Lottie said.

She glanced at Pickman. She didn’t have time to thank him. And maybe he didn’t deserve a thank-you, yet. Maybe this was just what she had earned from him, after all the mockery he’d subjected her to back in California. But in any case, she’d have to talk with him later.

For now, her job was just to walk away, head held high.

But before she got more than a few steps, she heard another voice that stopped her in her tracks.

This time, she was sure she must be hallucinating.

“Palmer,” the familiar voice called. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Lottie shook her head, in hopes of knocking this hallucination clean out of it, and kept walking.

But then Cunningham started in. “Palmer,” he barked. “Captain Woodward asked you a question.”

By now, Lottie was a good fifteen feet from Cunningham and the other unassigned men.

She hoped blindly that at that distance, she’d misheard him, and that he’d said anything, anything else at all, other than “Captain Woodward.”

But when she turned back, there was Captain Woodward, grinning at her.

With irritation, she pushed down the part of her that could never help being surprised by how blue his eyes were.

“I’m assigned to that Wildcat over there,” Lottie said, gesturing behind her.

But it was clear by now that Captain Woodward’s question had never been anything more than rhetorical.

Cunningham was busy giving Captain Woodward a hearty handshake. “Welcome back to paradise,” Cunningham said. “I think I managed to keep the place running while you were on R & R.”

R & R? Lottie wondered. Was that what they thought of the demanding training Captain Woodward had just put her whole team through?

Captain Woodward was looking around the shop with an appreciative air. “I bet it’s running better than it ever did when I was in charge,” he said.

In charge? Lottie thought with a sinking feeling. Was there any place in the US Navy where she wouldn’t be forced to work with Captain Woodward?

But old Cunningham already looked antsy to get back to work.

“We got a big carrier going out,” he said. “Gonna be working double time till it ships.”

Captain Woodward grinned. “In other words,” he said, “no more R & R?”

Cunningham’s lined face cracked a smile.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Captain Woodward said.

“Pick your team,” Cunningham said. “Get to it.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Captain Woodward joked, then looked at Lottie. “Palmer,” he said.

“Sir?” she said.

Captain Woodward gestured for her to join him. “Let that Wildcat be,” he said. “You’re on my team.”

“Your team?” Lottie repeated, still certain that she’d misunderstood something.

“Why do you think I had you stationed here in Pearl Harbor?” Captain Woodward said. “I wasn’t going to let them send my best mechanic off to some other shop.”

Lottie’s head began to spin, and the ground felt like it was shifting underneath her. Captain Woodward had been making her life miserable pretty much from the day they’d met. He’d made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want a woman in his shop, and she was no exception.

So what was he doing picking her for his team? And picking her first? And what had he just said about asking for her to be assigned to his shop? He was the reason she’d been stationed at Pearl Harbor?

As Lottie stood there in shock, Captain Woodward pointed at Pickman, then at three of the other new recruits who hadn’t been part of the shop in California. “Pickman,” he said. “You, you, and you.”

Beside him, Cunningham offered him the clipboard full of background facts on the new mechanics. “You wanna see their skills?” he asked.

“Naw,” Captain Woodward said. “If they’re any trouble, Palmer will whip them into shape.”

Lottie’s mouth fell open. With a gulp, she closed it.

“You got a plane for us?” Captain Woodward asked Cunningham.

“I got a Grumman Avenger no man in this place can get running,” Cunningham said, and pointed to the large shape of a torpedo bomber shrouded in tarps at the back of the shop.

“Maybe you need a woman,” Captain Woodward said. “Get over there,” he said to the men he’d just chosen, who scuttled off in the Avenger’s direction, then started to stride after them himself.

But when Lottie didn’t immediately follow, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

“Come on, Palmer,” he said.

Startled, Lottie jerked into action, hurrying to catch up with him and the other men.

At the wide-eyed expression on her face, Captain Woodward laughed.

“What’s the matter, Palmer?” he asked. “You already forget everything I taught you?”

A strange cocktail of determination and rage bubbled up inside of her. If Captain Woodward thought this was some kind of joke, then she was going to make darn sure that the joke was on him.